The present disclosure generally relates to the field of electronics. More particularly, an embodiment of the invention relates to reducing power consumption in arbiters utilized in interconnection routers.
As integrated circuit fabrication technology improves, manufacturers are able to integrate additional functionality onto a single silicon substrate. As the number of these functionalities increases, however, so does the number of components on a single chip. Additional components add additional signal switching, in turn, generating more heat. The additional heat may damage a chip by, for example, thermal expansion. Also, the additional heat may limit locations or applications of a computing system.
Interconnection routers may be used to communicate between various components of a computing system. An interconnection router generally includes an arbiter to determine which packets to route from input ports of the router to output ports of the router. Accordingly, an arbiter may consume power and generate heat each time a router communicates a data packet.